The Kid from Coffernam
The kid from Coffernam never existed… until I asked some friends to tell me about him.
I wanted to see if, in this way, “in a sense, collaborative writing [did] widen the distance between author/narrator and individual writer,” as one speaker posits in “Petals on a Wet Black Bough” (98).
This was a process story. I had friends gather around my computer and tell tales, react, do some searching. Some people required no elaboration—knowing he was a kid from Coffernam (whatever that means) was enough. Other volunteers enlisted the aid of five other constraints, constraints made up as the night of recording progressed, constraints based off the previous stories told.
I had meant to weave an analytical reader’s response into the master track, but the project became something all of its own—not academic, and not even an informal response to an essay. When my friends asked what I was responding to, why we were making what we were making, the original reason came second. The opportunity to collaborate superceded the scholastic motivations.
“The Kid from Coffernam” turned into “a ‘coming together’ of dissonant perspectives in order to restore the lived world, at the risk of imprecision and incongruity” (92). (I hope.)
—
The voices on this podcast belong to (in one sense):
Valerie Cochran
Andrea Cochran
Lucas Tieman
Melanie Schaap
Hannah Smith
Lauren Schrieber
Megan Luepke
Tom Heet
Evan Bryson
Robert Herrold
Mike Rosenwinkle
Max Scourzo
Brekk Berg
This podcast was recorded in Hannah’s bedroom, 21 September 2007, on a Friday night.
September 27th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
esb,
I’ve listened again (with headphones!), thinking in particular of this term “multivocal,” which–when we briefly spoke in person about the podcast–seemed to be the term that incited you to creation and interested you for reflection. I keep looking for deeper meaning in the word, more than just “multiple voices.” And I get stuck. BUT, even if the meaning of the word itself is obvious, there’s not much that’s simply “obvious” about the podcast. I like the way the voices “swim,” how one surfaces and commands attention, how another bobs up and competes and hips the initial voice away, how many voices continue to play in the background (like the lived world restored, imprecise and incongruous). When Vielstimmig writes that the multivocal essay “accommodates narrative, exposition, and pattern” (91), it’s the latter that I think of for your podcast. Narrative, yes, but the art of arrangement you’ve brought to the piece is pattern.
I’m not sure I’m yet persuaded that the collaborative essay widens the distance between Author/narrator and individual writer(s). I tend to agree with the italicized font: “the collaborated Author is artifice, but in the same way–within the same parameters–as the single Author artifice” (98). Maybe it’s because, in the end, your podcast feels more multivocal to me than collaborative–your role as instigator and editor looms large (though perhaps a deeper conversation of how the collaboration went would change my mind). So I find myself less interested in applying the concept of persona(e) to your podcast, and more interested in the quote about how new media cultivates a new kind of attention, one which includes “irreverence, quick decision making, the ability to identify the whole from the fragment, and an exquisite taste for juxtaposition” (90).